On Monday JAXA released more footage taken by the KAGUYA orbiter during its lunar mapping mission. KAGUYA spent several months flying over the moon at altitudes ranging from 10-50km (about 6-30 miles) taking video with its high-definition camera before finally ending its mission and crash landing onto the moon on June 10, 2009. The sequence…
Tag: moon
No Editing Required
This raw image from Cassini requires no editing to be presentable…..it’s simply a beautiful shot of Mimas hovering in front of the rings with Saturn’s shadow cast across them. Simple, untouched beauty at its best. That little Cassini….he’s getting good at this. 🙂 Image: NASA/JPL/Space Science Institute
The Results Are In
The data is in from today’s flyby of Enceladus and the images so far have not disappointed! The moon’s characteristic southern jets are running at full power, seen above, backlit by the sun and thereby easily visible to Cassini’s cameras. Below are a couple more images, one of Enceladus’ illuminated icy face with Saturn’s ringplane…
Target: Enceladus
Later today, Monday, November 2, the Cassini spacecraft will execute another close flyby of Saturn’s moon Enceladus and take some highly detailed images of the south polar region – the source of the little moon’s enigmatic jets. We should hopefully see some image data returned by the afternoon. 🙂 The image above is a…
Sister Moons
Little Tethys is getting a lot of face time in front of Cassini’s lens. In this photo, from a raw image taken on October 17, Tethys passes across the hazy face of her much larger sister, Titan. 662-mile-wide Tethys is dwarfed by the 3,200-mile-wide Titan, although the distance that separates them in this image reduces…
Full Moon
Here’s an amazing portrait of Tethys, a 662-mile-wide, airless and  heavily-cratered moon of Saturn. The photo was taken by Cassini on October 14, 2009, with the moon fully lit by the sun. Its high reflectivity (albedo) indicate a large amount of ice in its composition. I adjusted the image to bring out the details in…
A Rhea View
Here’s an amazingly detailed view of the extensively cratered surface of Rhea, Saturn’s second-largest moon, taken during a particularly close encounter by Cassini on October 13, 2009. About 950 miles wide Rhea is less than a third the size of Titan, Saturn’s largest moon. Unlike Titan, Rhea has no atmosphere at all to speak of…
A Cratered Crescent Composition
The crescent of Saturn’s moon Tethys hovers serenely over a dimly-lit ringplane in this raw image, taken by the Cassini orbiter on October 11, 2009. Frigid, airless and heavily-cratered, Tethys is mostly composed of water ice and rock. It is 662 miles wide. Image: NASA/JPL/SSI
Eagle’s Landing Site
This is what the Apollo 11 landing site looks like today from lunar orbit via NASA’s Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter. Visible here is the remaining descent stage of the lander, a couple of left-behind scientific experiments and the tripod of a television camera as well as a dark trail of footprints to “Little West” crater left by…
In Fact, It’s Cold As Hell
When you look up at the moon, you’re looking at what is now believed to be the coldest place in the solar system, according to recent data from the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter. Craters at the moon’s south pole stay in constant shadow, their rims blocking sunlight from reaching their interiors. In these areas of permanent…
Look on the Bright Side
Another view of Saturn’s moon Iapetus (see previous post) shows the brighter surface illuminated by the sun, with a section of the darker surface visible near the moon’s equator. This dual-coloration of the 914-mile-wide moon was first observed by Giovanni Cassini in 1671. Noticing that the moon was only visible when on the western side…
Into the Blue
Discovered by philosophy professor Ted Stryk in the archives of Voyager 2 image data, four separate images were combined to show the shadow of Despina – lightened for better visibility – crossing over the sky blue face of Neptune. Neptune, now officially the outermost planet in our solar system, was visited by Voyager 2 in…
Lights in the Dark 